First it was the music industry and from what I have noticed in the last few months it has hit the movie business BIG TIME.

The downloading of movies off the internet. I can't believe how many people are doing it and don't even have a second thought about it. Like it's just the way it is.

My son is 10 and I have taught him that it's theft. Just as if you went into a store and put a bottle of coke
under your jacket and walked out without paying. The sad thing is, he is one of the very few kids in his class that doesn't download movies off the internet. Actually it' kind of odd if you don't. He was going to a new release of a movie on friday night (the first night the movie was out at theaters) and his friend called him up and asked him if he wanted to see the movie at his house!! It had already been on the internet for several days.

I don't know why it is, but most of the general public do not think of downloading movies as a crime. I've asked people I know that do it, and I tell them...you know it's stealing. They just look at you funny.

I would say the reason why people dont think tiwce, is because they industry is spending to much money on DVDs, and they make the DVD so expensive that people dont care nymore.. and plus socity is so currupted that who cares right? Its all about me me me... maybe thats why.. I could be wrong.. just my own thought..

I don't know why it is, but most of the general public do not think of downloading movies as a crime. I've asked people I know that do it, and I tell them...you know it's stealing. They just look at you funny.

Hey, is this what it all comes down to?

It's only a crime if you get caught.Welcome to the real world where morality is about cause & effectPeople don't steal cars cause they're afraid of getting arrestedNow if they started arresting downloaders...well people might stop.Of course it be a ridiculous society that arrested people for downloading a movie.

Everybody steals if they can--look at big corporations skirting taxes stealing workers pensions...The only person that loses is the honest joe who doesn't steal (haven't you read your Hemingway?)

The industry is just going to have to think of an ingenious way of dealing with this problem...They're going to have to make people want to come back to the theatersCause the problem is not really piracy it's people loss of interest in the theater.

I'm not advocating piracy I'm just saying it's normal that it happens.

I forget who it was who said that the only reason copyright law is tolerated is that it is rarely enforced.

Personally I can't figure out what the big deal is. Despite what Jack Valenti would like us to think, movie piracy is nothing new. So long as the industry and the pirates continue to fight each other to this kind of uneasy standoff where it's much too much hassle for most people to pirate, I don't see it as a huge problem.

What is a problem is that future formats like whatever replaces DVD in the hi-def arena will increasingly be crippled and reduced by evermore draconian antipiracy measures more intended to lock people into a certain manufacturer than prevent piracy. As it stands right now, you can own an HD-DVD drive, you can own a Dell 2405FPW flat panel display, all of which is more than capable of producing sparkling HD images, and you'll get an image at something like 960x540 because your display chain doesn't conform to some random proprietary security spec. It's rather like all these software security formats - if you want access to itunes, you have to buy an ipod. It's nothing to do with security, it's to make sure that when you buy another MP3 player, it also has to be an ipod.

This is patently nothing to do with preventing piracy. It's been possible to play standard DVDs back out of an uncompressed, unencrypted DVI port for years and I am not aware of a single instance where it's been even suggested as a vector for piracy. It's vastly easier to circumvent the software encryption on the disc than to engage in the amount of microelectronics dev that would be needed. Whether we can expect HD content protection to be any less laughably naive is another question.

So here we have a situation where piracy, black-hat as it may be, is being used as an excuse to further screw the public. And since the world motion picture market is controlled by the US, I find my viewing being controlled by the MPAA, which might as well be the motion picture association of the world for all the chance we have of avoiding its clutches. My elected representatives, even if they gave a damn, have even less influence over the MPAA than those in the US - and that's saying something.

I do not support piracy, but equall I do not support the ridiculous, ineffective, inconvenient and commercially-motivated actions of content producers who claim to work against it. The more draconian anti-piracy measures become, the more necessary piracy will be.

I think poeple don't see it as a crime brcause its not material, when you steal it, you are not really taking anything away, because information can be copied for free. The one thing they are loosing is customers, but most of those downloaders would not buy the originals anyway.
DVD is as bad format as it is, so going to divx or some bootleg dvd obviously means these people don't care enough about the quality to buy original dvd's.

My son is 10 and I have taught him that it's theft. Just as if you went into a store and put a bottle of cokeunder your jacket and walked out without paying.

I dont see it that way because that means that you stole a film that you DEFINITELY otherwise would have paid for, and that isn't true.

You might illegally download a film that you never would pay for otherwise. A film youre not dying to see and would never shell out 2 cents for, let alone $10.

Also, I know people who have paid to see a film in the theater, sometimes more than once, and STILL illegally download the film, then, once the film is on DVD, buy the DVD as well. Friend of mine did this for the last LORD OF THE RING film.

I dont agree with every law in this country. I sometimes drive faster than the speed limit. Sometimes I slow down instead of stopping at a "STOP" sign. Sometimes I jaywalk.

How would I feel if someone watched one of my films without paying? Well, it happens all the time. Like all or most of us here, I'm a smallltime indie gureilla filmmaker. I let friends and family and even strangers watch my shorts for free. And these things can costs thousands to make, out of my own pocket. Ive yet to profit dollarwise from any one of my films.

I'm not a businessman, never was. I don't plan on getting rich from filmmaking, nowhere near it. Maybe making a somewhat comfortable living.

Have you ever snuck into a movie theater without paying and watched an entire film for free? I have, many times. And I've worked at 2 different theater chains as well.

However, I do occaisonally still pay full full price to see a film, (I mean OCCAISONALLY, like 3 times a year)I still buy DVDs, and I currently pay for cable TV.

When it comes to films, I don't even bother to even search for pirate copies, because the originals are so cheap. I can get a DVD to my home in 4 days (including shipping) from amazon.uk for about 15 dollars, which is cheaper than I can buy it in the local store, 15 dollars is really nothing.
But those are films I really want to own.

But I hate DVD and lesser formats alltogether anyway. I hate them because of compression, plasticky colors, bubblegum esthetics and low resolution.
I like watching movies in cinema, and some TV tapes can look good at times, but DVD's are a necessary evil, because that's the only way to own a film in some minimum acceptable quality.

I have a feeling that HDDVD is not going to change any of the current problems of DVD, it will be same as DVD only bigger.
I'd rather have SD resolution professional quality video at home on than consumer quality HD on these new HD DVD's or blue rays.

The thing is, it's so easy to get away with. A friend of mine has atleast 100 movies and astleast 30 gigs worth of MP3s downloaded on his computer, it's only when you start selling them that you get caught.

It is possible to find out who is downloading these movies, but there lies another problem, thousands of people do it. What are you going to do, arrest them all? Even if you arrested a few people, to show an example, I doubt many people would care.

Although I heard that apparently internet piracy only accounts for 1% of the total profits. I realise 1% is a huge amount when you consider the money being taken in, but at the end of the day, it's still only 1%.

If they really want to cut down on it, then they need to toughen up, seriously. 99.99% of torrents are used for illegal downloading, the technology needs banning. Easier said than done, but that will cut down piracy by a huge amount.

Stopping people copying DVD's is practically impossible, they'll do it one way or another. Piracy of DVDs will never be stopped, but it can be cut down. Governments just need to have some balls and do something about it.

There are groups that rip these DVD's and share them across the internet. The TUS group is one of them. Aswell as Darkside RG. I think if those got shutdown then that would help both the music and film industry.

One good idea would be to use the internet, I mean you can already buy MP3s on the net, I haven't heard of anywhere that you can pay and download movies. If a company setup servers with hugh bandwidth connections, people could even download them at there top internet speed (mines around 500k per sec)

It would be a bit cheaper than buying the DVDs, i.e. they could do them for about £5 (about $7/8)

Let's just nip this one in the bud right now - movie piracy is not stealing. Stealing something deprives someone else of its use, and no, that definition doesn't extend to depriving the producers of the content of the profit of selling it because they're still free to do so.

I don't think it's relevant to apply the morality of common property law to copyright proprietorship. Antipiracy trailers which try to do so make me spit - they've hijacked cinema as advertising for B-movie DVDs, now they're hijacking basic moral principles to further line their pockets.

And for what it's worth I've never found a pirate movie that was of watchable quality!

The major distributors/studios should just put out their movies right away for download, higher quality, but with advertising all over it, like while the movie's playing. I'm thinking about when you watch a soccer game, they can't break for commercials so they roll a big snickers bar over the top of your screen next to the scoreboard. So then they can make money off the ads, the consumer who doesn't care about quality wouldn't care. Then those of us who do like the quality (picture/sound) would go to the theater or rent Criterion quality movies.

O.K. so it sounds a little scary, but it's just an idea I'm throwing out there...

Hollywood also has a major PR problem in this area. What industry do you know of that likes to trumpet its success more than Hollywood? When a film is a hit they go nuts making sure every one knows that the film quickly broke the 100 million dollar mark in the US market.

Next you turn on your TV and hear endless reports of the tens of millions paid to this actor and that actor.

So this gets people thinking, especially young people, with all that money being made how can I be stealing from these people? They make untold millions on a daily basis.

How can they lose from a download? It's not like I'm stealing from the local orphanage? The stars and movie execs live in multi million dollar mansions, I see it on TV every day.

The middle class group of people that work on movies rarely if ever get any press coverage, it's like they don't exist to the public.

The people that really amaze me are the ones that steal prints right out of the edit suite or post shop, those guys have some serious guts.

And for what it's worth I've never found a pirate movie that was of watchable quality!

I used to download movies all the time, I had a collection of about 30 on my computer, admittedly and regrettably.

The VCD encoded ones are absolute crap, I had an 800mb Donnie Darko VCD image file, found it hard to watch.

But on the other hand, with certain video encoders, you can squeeze a pretty high quality video into a 700mb file. Sometimes they split the video into two parts, 700mb each, and the quality of them are fantastic. Unfortunately. (I once had a 1400mb copy of Sin City, it was very hard to notice any difference between it and the original DVD)

When you have video files like that, and with certain tools that you could download anywhere, you can easily make a DVD that looks very similar to the original DVD.

With all the software on the internet, which, you can also very easily crack, via the internet, it's possible for anyone with slight knowledge of computers to rip, encode, distribute copies of DVD's. I used to do it within an hour or two.

But err, just so that everyone knows I don't do that anymore and I'm against it. Just pointing out how easy it is.

"I don't think it's relevant to apply the morality of common property law to copyright proprietorship."

I find the new anti-piracy ads on DVDs morally reprehensible. Whomever is responsible for them has made a serious error in ethical judgement, for which they should be admonished.

Equating breaking and entering, car theft, or other aggressive property crimes with downloading and viewing copyrighted material without permission is totally irresponsible. It may be ethically wrong or illegal to download and view copyrighted material without permission, I have no argument there, but it is clearly not the kind of criminal behavior exhibited by a person who steals an automobile off the street. Why don't they just go all the way with these ads and show someone killing babies, pushing old ladies into traffic, or otherwise engaging in illegal behavior, and then equate that with violating copyright law?

The producers of these ads are posturing as authorities on ethical judgement, but ironically these ads are not about ethics at all, they are simply meant to stop behaviour which is reducing someone's profit margin. Again, the producers of these ads may have a legitimate legal/ethical argument, but how they are expressing it is very bad.

Unfortunately we live in a world where stealing is stealing, it doesn't matter what it is. In England at least.

Over here you can get longer in prison for stealing and eating a mars bar than stealing a Ferrari.

Of course it's no where near as bad as stealing someones Ferrari, but at the end of the day, it's still stealing.

For instance I work in a photographic store, someone got fired and arrested a few months back for stealing a few pounds worth of photos. Whereas someone else also got fired and arrested for stealing a £1000 camera, and he got the same punishment. It's ridiculous, but it's the principal of it.

Copying digital information or not, it all comes under stealing as far as the law is concerned.

But on the other hand, with certain video encoders, you can squeeze a pretty high quality video into a 700mb file. Sometimes they split the video into two parts, 700mb each, and the quality of them are fantastic. Unfortunately. (I once had a 1400mb copy of Sin City, it was very hard to notice any difference between it and the original DVD)

Hollywood lecturing the public on "ethics". Now that is the pot calling the kettle black. Does Hollywood have any morals at all?

It's almost as bad as the gov't telling people if they don't pay their taxes they're stealing from the gov't. What organizations on the planet are more corrupt than governments?

R,

But in a way you are stealing if you don't pay taxes. What right do you have to use the roads and the public parks that the tax payers pay for if you're not going to contrbute anything yourself. You're just taking a free ride in life.

Taxes aren't owned by the government. They're owned by the public, kept in a public fund, controlled by the government that would soon be booted out if they were caught using it for anything out of the publics interest.

I mean, we're the leaders here.

They lie, they cheat, they steal, but for some reason it's ok when they do it.

Because it's in the publics interest.

Yeah, pretty high quality. . . like VHS.

There are so many factors that effect it, i.e. the length othe movie, the quality of the sound e.t.c. But yeh I'd say VHS quality is about right for the average 700mb film. 1400mb films are somewhere in between VHS and DVD.

And bare in mind that with the right internet connection, you can have these movies done within an hour or two. (Also depending on many other factors)

Let's just nip this one in the bud right now - movie piracy is not stealing. Stealing something deprives someone else of its use, and no, that definition doesn't extend to depriving the producers of the content of the profit of selling it because they're still free to do so.

I don't think it's relevant to apply the morality of common property law to copyright proprietorship. Antipiracy trailers which try to do so make me spit - they've hijacked cinema as advertising for B-movie DVDs, now they're hijacking basic moral principles to further line their pockets.

And for what it's worth I've never found a pirate movie that was of watchable quality!

Phil

Of course it's stealing because it deprives the seller of his market. A waiter in a restaurant has been assigned a group of tables to wait on, another waiter cuts into the area and serves a couple of the tables that were designated for the first waiter. Technically the second waiter did not deprive the first waiter of their livelihood because they were busy serving other tables, but everybody would agree it was stealing UNLESS the first waiter was so dang slow that the customers would have gotten up and walked away.

But even poor or slow service in the area of movie releases or dvd releases isn't justification for people downloading movies for "free" because free is a number that is cannot be competed with. Additionally, WHEN a movie is downloaded is also a big issue. If people want to see a movie a year after it's been released, that is no where near as big of an offense as seeing the movie before it's even been released.

I believe that it could be easy to detect internet piracy. The Motion picture industry would register certain algorithmic patterns from throughout a movie and when theose algorithm's are detected, a notification would be sent out and the downloader could be identified.